Reviews

Adrian Harte

Small Victories: The True Story of Faith No More

Published by Jawbone

Faith No More's diversity is what has always made it fascinating. From even before keyboard player Roddy Bottum, drummer Mike Bordin, and bassist Bill Gould officially christened themselves Faith No More in 1983, the band's history is rife with as many twists and turns as the albums it produced.

Having run the informational site newfaithnomore.com since 2009, journalist Adrian Harte is in a unique position to write the band's history. Culled from hundreds of interviews with band members and key players, along with extensive research, Small Victories proves as entertaining a biography as one could hope to read. Harte spends the first 200 pages meticulously chronicling the band from its first days through its 1989 breakthrough album The Real Thing. It is a fascinating story of a group of musicians coming into its own, through numerous early vocalists (including, most famously, a young Courtney Love) and two albums before finding the man who would guide it to stardom in Mike Patton.

With 200 pages devoted to FNM through The Real Thing, Small Victories only allows 130 some odd pages to finish the band's trajectory. This speaks to not only the detail invested here in the band's inchoate period, but also to the fact that Harte's narrative is so engaging, one does not want the band's tale to end. For the Faith No More enthusiast, there is much to dig into here. But perhaps more tellingly and to the book's great credit, even the Faith No More newbie will be entranced and enrapt by the tale. (www.jawbonepress.com)